AES E-Library

Audio Applications of the Teager Energy Operator

The Teager Energy Operator (TEO) is a nonlinear time domain operator with a delightfully simple implementation that offers a variety of uses in audio applications. We first review the TEO as well as the Discrete Energy Separation Algorithm (DESA). We demonstrate how the TEO can be used to detect missing samples or other kinds of transients. We compare Short Time Fourier T ransform techniques suc h as the well known Phase Vocoder with the Energy Separation operator using synthetic signals. We also study the performance with noise and demonstrate how binomial smoothing can be used to ameliorate noise. We also compare the Hilbert Transform Instantaneous Frequency detection with the TEO. We review the use of the DESA operator in musical instrument analysis and discuss the use of the TEO in signal enhancement. The TEO and DESA show considerable promise for use in audio analysis applications.